Film 1
Film 2
Film 3

Against the wall

2016

3-channel video installation
Length about 7 minutes
Camera: Till Beckmann
no sound

At the time of the GDR political prisoners were imprisoned and psychologically tortured in the Stasi remand prison Berlin-Hohenschönhausen. They were hermetically cut off from the outside world and mostly isolated from their fellow prisoners. The walls and furnishings became, over time, familiar, their private environment, their new home.

In the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen memorial I filmed walls and facilities of cells, interrogation rooms and corridors. In a close-up position is slowly swiveled over walls and furniture. The camera acts like a scanner.

The walls speak of isolation and exclusion. But they also allowed a mental freedom: in the cracks, scratches and stains are images that lead out in the daydream, into nature, in childhood memories, to friends and family. Escape to an inner world, the real home.

The flow of images symbolizes the steady flow of thoughts and feelings that can not be stopped: the struggling, the search for faults and guilt, the self-hatred, the revenge plans, the coloring of the world outside, the coloring of the world afterwards, what kind of person is the interrogator, what does the Stasi want from me, how can I get out of here quickly?